Gently he lay the dead infant on the ground. “I pray
for your eternal happiness in the afterlife.” He turned to Tamara.
“Are we the only ones alive?”

Her moist eyes were fixed on the tiny corpse, and she
seemed in a daze.

Jamal shook her by the shoulders. “Tamara, the child
will be much happier where he is going. We must think of our own
survival now. We must live to serve as Allah’s instruments of
vengeance.”

He strapped his backpack on, came to his knees, and
looked about. An eerie silence enveloped the garden. Scattered all
over the terrace were bloodied bodies. His gaze shifted to the
reflecting pool in front of the terrace. Riddled with bullet wounds,
two men lay face down in the shallow water. Next to them a little
girl floated on her back, her terrified features frozen in death.
Jamal groaned at recognizing his three-year-old niece.

After breathing a few profanities, he whispered to
Tamara, “As God is my witness, dear cousin, we must take an oath to
die rather than let the murderers escape justice.”

Seeing no signs of the masked gunmen, Jamal crept out on
the terrace to inspect the bodies, hoping some were still alive. He
looked for movement. Any movement.

All were dead.

He ran inside the mansion and into his uncle’s office.
Rummaging through a file cabinet, he found the three-page document he
had prepared a few weeks earlier. After folding it, he placed it
inside a canvas-wrapped package in his backpack. He then retrieved
his uncle’s car keys from the middle drawer of the desk and hurried
back to Tamara. Grasping her hand, he led her to the Mercedes sedan
parked on the cement driveway. He dropped his backpack on the rear
seat, and they climbed into the car. Taking a final look at the
carnage, he offered a silent prayer, then drove off.